Survive
by Emerson D'Artagnan
Summary: Yes, it was wrong of Mayella to send an innocent man to his death. But why would she do that without a valid alternative? In a world of black and white, Mayella learns that some things are simply neither and both at the same time.


Yes, it was wrong of Mayelle to send an innocent man to his death. But why would she do that without a valid alternative? In a world of black and white, Mayella learns that some things are simply neither and both at the same time.

**A/N: Hey, folks, this is the first TKaM fanfic I've done and -- GASP! -- it wasn't school-related! In fact, I wrote it during the summer! SHOCKING, I know. It just happens to be my favorite book. So sue me. Anyway, I just thought I'd ask you all to very kindly R & R, or at least leaving a number on a scale of 1 (you sucked! Quit writing! Your work has sent me to therapy, please jump off a building now kthnxbye) to 10 (Wow, I was so blown away by you fantastic work that no words could even constitute a review which is why I'm only leaving you a number instead!) I promise to return the favor! Anyway, I'm rambling.**

**Disclaimer: The characters and situations presented didn't come from my brain, and I'm sure Nelle Harper Lee would be horrified to discover my mind being likened to hers. She wrote The Great American Novel and was best friends with Truman Capote (who, FYI, was stalke dby Andy Warhol!) Needless to say, I would die of joy (and old age, probably) if I were actually her.**

"Daddy, I don't wanna do this!"

Bob Ewell didn't slap his daughter across the face. Slapping was what women did. He balled a fist and knocked her right across the mouth, the force of the blow sending her stumbling into a wall. "Well, yer a-gonna!"

"But Daddy!" Mayella sobbed from her crumpled position on the floor, "it ain't right, it just ain't right!"

Bob Ewell hurled his almost-empty whiskey bottle at Mayella. She ducked out of the way just in time– it shattered into dozens of gleaming pieces with a sharp scream, splattering the girl with stinging liquid. Just as well– the last thing Bob Ewell needed was his Mayella showing up in court tomorrow lookin' more beat up'n she already were. The short man planted his feet solidly (or as solidly as he could manage in such an inebriated state) and shook his finger at her, glaring balefully. "What ain't right is whatchew done with that nigger!" he screamed. "And now, yew flea-bitten little whore, yer gonna get up in fronta all them folks and yer gonna tell them 'at just like I learned ye! Y'hear, Mayella! I ain't about to have no daughter o'mine goin' 'bout with them niggers, no daughter o'mine's gonna make our name trash!" Even sober, Bob Ewell wouldn't have recognized the disgusting ironies of his own speech.

Mayella began sobbing even harder, causing her to choke on the accumulated saliva and mucus in her through and nose. "I ain't done nothin' wrong!" the teenager shrieked at her father, going redder in the face than a harvest moon. "I ain't done nothin' wrong and you know it, too!"

Immediately knowing that she'd made a huge mistake, a whimpering Mayella crawled past her father into the middle of the room; she'd long ago learned the consequences of trying to curl up in a corner. At that moment, Bob Ewell swooped down in a fury, only to find his head connecting painfully with the wall where his daughter had just been. Seeing what could very well be her one and only chance, Mayella scrambled to her bare feet and ran as fast as her thin, malnourished legs would carry her out the back door– if you could call it a door. It was more of an opening, really, as the door had been unhinged and rotting a few feet away on the back porch since she could remember.

Mayella heard lots of very loud swearing from deep within the shack she called a home.

Knowing she didn't have much time before he came out to find her, Mayella quickly considered her options: there was under the ramshackle porch, where their countless dogs and who could ever know what else slept; there was the old Ford, sitting tireless and looking almost as though it had grown and died right where it lay, just like the grass around it, whose windows had been broken so long that the shards were no longer sharp to the touch; and then there was that old elm tree, so full of elm beetles that Mayella sometimes stopped to wonder if it were even still alive, which stood in a foreboding tower over the old Ford and casting much of their old lot into a nearly-black shadow in the already inky night.

BANG. He was coming.

BANG. "Mayella, you whore!"

Mayella sprinted to the old car, whose decrepit body squeaked and gave way a little under her deft feet as she unceremoniously clambered unto it in order to reach the lower branches of the great dead tree, her only saving grace.

At the moment she had just struggled to heave her small body into the brown leaves, she heard a sharp bang– Bob Ewell was standing on the back porch, glaring threateningly out into the night with a bottle of renewed resources in his hand. The old back door lay flat on the ground, having been knocked over by his stumbling, drunken haste, rotten and mealy pieces scattered about with the insects and grubs who'd just been so snugly settled into their home wriggling to get back in between the chunks of dilapidated wood.

Even though she knew she was invisible to her father's unfocused eyes, Mayella's very breath caught in her throat the moment he stepped out into the night, as though with one tiny breath the tree would come alive and surrender her to the mercy of her father.

"ELLAMAY EWELL," Bob screamed into the night, causing the girl's knuckles go white on the branch she was clinging so desperately to. "IF... If I take yew inta that courtroom amarra...tomarrah... and yew make a fool a me, I swear... girl, I swear that it'd be the last thing y'ell ever do! Mark my words, girl, so help me, if you don't stick to our story, the hell if I don't strangle ye right thar in fronta the judge! God as my witness, y'ell never see the light of another day again! I'LL KILL YOU, MAYELLA! Y'HEAR?"

Bob let loose a string of the most colorful words he could put together, though it was mostly a jumbled, incoherent mix of his favorite oaths, and he stumbled drunkenly back into the house.

Mayella shook so violently that leaves began to drop from the tree, one by one, as though the elm were sobbing right along side her. After what seemed like an eternity with her tail uncomfortably settled on the thick, rough bark of the tree, which stabbed her right though the thin fabric of her dress as though she wore nothing at all, Mayella gave a hearty sniff.

With the darkest look she could muster, she glowered into the night sky. Stars twinkled down merrily at her, mocking her sorrow and her pain, and Mayella made a resolution. Ever since she was very small, Mayella's father had made her life a living hell. He'd starved her, he'd whipped her and beat her, he'd raped her, he'd humiliated her, he'd done the same to all her younger siblings, and yet somehow, by some miracle, she'd survived this long. She didn't know why or how she'd made it, but she did know that she hadn't made it this far to die at the hands of her perpetually drunken father.

If she didn't tell the truth tomorrow, she thought, an innocent man would be killed.

If she did tell the truth tomorrow, her father would murder her, and she knew he meant it this time.

One person had to die.

But it wasn't going to be her.


End file.
